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Sky Blue Looks Beyond N.W.S.L. Playoffs

Sky Blue's Monica Ocampo, left, was named the N.W.S.L. player of the month for August. She leads the team with 8 goals.Credit
Photographs by Howard C. Smith/ISI Photos

The first season in the third attempt to establish a sustainable women’s professional soccer league in the United States is nearing a close.

On Saturday, the top four teams — Western New York, Kansas City, Portland and Sky Blue — in the eight-team National Women’s Soccer League will play for a spot in the first league final. With the federations of the United States, Canada and Mexico underwriting the bill to pay their national team players, who are sprinkled throughout the league, club teams have been relieved of an expense that helped to crush its two predecessors, Women’s United Soccer Association and Women’s Professional Soccer.

“We wanted to take a conservative approach with the team,” said Thomas Hofstetter, the president and chief executive of Sky Blue, which played its home games on the campus of Rutgers University in Piscataway, N.J. “In the past we saw people throw money at the stars, but especially in women’s soccer you can have a good team built on team spirit. We built a balanced team. And by doing that this year, we were able to come in on budget, acutally under budget.”

Hofstetter has long been an evangelist for women’s soccer. A native of Germany, he got involved in 2007. His team won the W.P.S. title in 2008 and has five consecutive winning seasons. Before the three North American soccer federations came together to launch the N.W.S.L., Hofstetter was quick to point out that in Europe, national federations subsidized relatively successful women’s leagues in countries like France, Germany, Sweden and Norway. He advocated for a similar setup in the U.S.

With the league seemingly secure for at least another two seasons (Canada hosts the 2015 Women’s World Cup), Hofstetter and Sky Blue have for nearly a year been holding discussions with the top executives of Major League Soccer’s Red Bulls.

“We have been holding discussions, not negotiations,” Red Bulls General Manager Jerome de Bontin said. He added: “I am a proponent and supporter of women’s soccer. I believe that women’s soccer is not just a female version of the men’s game, but that it has a true identity. It is an interesting game to watch. It flows well and the game has improved as players are more technical. It is cleaner than the men’s game and is very entertaining to watch.”

There are three possibilities:

■ Sky Blue could play its home schedule (or a part of it) at Red Bull Arena in Harrison, N.J. Sky Blue, which at one time was in first place in the N.W.S.L., had planned to play its postseason schedule at R.B.A. had it finished in first place. But that possibility evaporated late in the regular season and Sky Blue finished fourth, and will play in Rochester on Saturday against Western New York (Fox Sports2, 8 p.m. Eastern).

Photo

Christie Rampone, the U.S. national veteran and Sky Blue captain.

■ Sky Blue and the Red Bulls could enter into a working relationship, perhaps with Sky Blue becoming a paying tenant at the stadium (by some estimates it costs $100,000 simply to open the gates at Red Bull Arena) and playing doubleheaders after the men’s games. The Red Bulls could, for example, use their ticket-sales staff to also sell Sky Blue tickets.

■ The Red Bulls, a club led by de Bontin, who worked in the past with the women’s programs in his native France with Paris St.-Germain and Lyon, could buy Sky Blue. The Portland Timbers are the only other M.L.S. team to own an N.W.S.L. team, and the Portland Thorns have consistently outdrawn several M.L.S. and N.A.S.L. clubs.

Portland plays at Kansas City in the other semifinal on Saturday (Fox Sports 2, 2 p.m. Eastern). “Portland is showing the way in demonstrating to other M.L.S. teams that there is a commercial opportunity for women’s soccer,” de Bontin said.

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Adding a women’s team would enable the Red Bulls to more fully use Red Bull Arena, which this year will host between 25 and 30 soccer events. The club also recently inaugurated a new training center in East Hanover, N.J.

“The priority at Red Bull Arena is to deliver a perfect pitch and a great stadium to support our first team: the New York Red Bulls,” de Bontin said. “This year, though, we have managed to hold some very successful events. Adding 10 home games for a women’s team is not problematic and could be fit in the calendar without any changes to the M.L.S. schedule. I believe that everyone would welcome additional events at Red Bull Arena.”

The relationship between de Bontin and Phil Murphy, a former United States ambassador to Germany and the majority shareholder in Sky Blue, goes back to their eight years together on the board of the United States Soccer Foundation. With both clubs based in New Jersey, a collaboration has long made sense, but has long been seen as incompatible. Perhaps the tipping point was the United States-South Korea exhibition match at Red Bull Arena on June 20 that attracted nearly 20,000 spectators.

“It proved there is interest in metro New York in women’s soccer,” Hofstetter said. “We don’t need 20,000 to have a good gate for a game. We couldn’t fill the stadium, but with enough time both organizations could make it a good event.” He added: “Soccer is the most popular youth sport in America, and nearly half the players are girls. It’s a much higher percentage than any other country in the world. It should make anyone involved in professional soccer in the U.S. at least think about it. It is a growth opportunity.”

While Hofstetter said a decision could come within “two to four weeks, by the end of September or early October,” de Bontin was more cautious, though mostly optimisitic.

“The New York Red Bulls want to embrace all aspects of the sport from the grassroots, high school and college levels, and women’s soccer,” he said.

Hofstetter said: “I’ve stuck it out so long, and now we’re at the point where I think there is an opportunity to do something bigger and better. Both parties are open to all ideas. All the discussions have been high level and everything’s on the table. It is a close relationship and we’re thinking more long term.”